To write or not to write

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Haven't really been blogging lately. Don't really know what to write about. Can't write about Cam any more and don't really have a great feeling about writing about what I do every day all day long - teaching and studying. Not really much of a change. Someone kind of said it once a long time ago when I was blogging, my blog isn't a travel blog and that's what the site's for. I live here and have a life so I haven't really thought that people would want to read about it. The things I could possibly write about are the changes in my daily activities - like yesterday my class had a get together so I went and got to meet a bunch of Germans. There aren't any Germans that I know of besides them in Dalian so that was really cool. We ended up going to a disco club and this really annoying Chinese dude was being extremely pushy and shove-y. The Germans and I asked him to back off and leave us alone many a times. He was bitching at us in Chinese and I was the only one to understand him. At one point I went to get the bartender but her response was "one minute" and then she didn't do anything. I said "do you want to start a fight in here?" She didn't respond and kept on ignoring me. The boys had made a blockade standing shoulder to shoulder with their backs to him talking to me and the German girl but the dude was really getting to be a pain in the neck. Finally we decided to move over a bit and the German girl (Vera) told a couple people around us to make sure he didn't follow us. It was pretty ugly. One of his friends finally came and had to physically hold him and walk him away from us. It was really interesting to hang out with the Germans because only two of them really had good English - my classmate Severin (who is actually from Austria) and Vera. We were also hanging out with this guy named Dirk who was from Eastern Germany. They told me his English isn't that great because he learned Russian in school until the Berlin Wall came down and he started learning English so now his Russian is OK and his English is OK. Neither really that great. Towards the end it was only the four of us at the disco - Severin, Vera, Dirk and I. At one point they were speaking German and I kind of tuned out. Later Severin apologized to me saying he never liked it when people exclude him by speaking their own language. I tried to tell him it doesn't bother me because I understand they need to speak their own language and it's not fair for me to assume they will always speak English but he said that I should assume they speak English to include me.

Earlier in the evening my other classmate Hannes was also hanging out with us along with a big group of Japanese students. Hannes and I were having a very interesting conversation because I was speaking Chinese and he was speaking English. We started out both speaking English but I quickly learned that in the loud environment we were in he couldn't catch my English so well and his Chinese is pretty good, unlike Severin. The Japanese students were really awesome to hang out with - they're generally a really laid back friendly crowd and so just awesome to be around. One of the Japanese students is in the Chinese level above ours and she asked me why I wasn't in her level because my speaking seems to be. She kind of answered her own question though by saying my writing and reading probably wasn't up to it. I was speaking Chinese to all the Japanese students.

I find it really kind of cool to speak Chinese to people whose first language isn't Chinese. There's an American I know who prefers to speak Chinese than English so we talk to each other in Chinese a lot. In the beginning that was all I ever heard him speak and he startled me when I heard him speak English the first time (even though it's obviously his mother tongue). I like the fact that I don't have to constantly speak English to connect the people I hang out with. Plus I really like the fact that unlike the Chinese students I teach who start speaking Chinese the second class is over, I can actually continue speaking Chinese with the same people I was just in class with. They have things they can teach me and I have things I can teach them. Best way to learn after all.

As for the jobs I know people keep saying I could do really great things and do a lot with all the languages I know and my ability to learn languages but I honestly think it's a load of bollocks. Until someone can mention one job by name that would actually need someone like me I will continue to think of it as such.

My health has been on a downward slope recently. I went into the Salon on Wednesday to get my hair done and Cam said "aack! What happened? You must not be sleeping." He requested that I buy some cream and explained to me that it was dandruff cream. On the bottle it said that dandruff is caused by stress. He pointed it out to me. So now I've learned that one can tell about one's mental health through the skin on one's head. It was like going to the doctor. Kinda cool. He said "go home and go to bed!" I'm also having another problem also due to not having enough time to do things that are necessary - like wash all my clothes by hand (as there are no washing machines in sight here). Thursday night I went to bed at 10:30 and got up Friday morning at 7am (as usual during the week). Thursday night I was thinking to myself. Yeah! It's 10:30! I'm going to get a lot of sleep and feel really great the next day but when I woke up on Friday I felt extremely tired and even fell asleep on the bus to school.

An interesting thing happened in class yesterday. My teacher tried to explain to us the difference between two different Chinese words "zai" and "you". These are two words that both mean "again" in English. These are also two words that I've been using for a long time. But for whatever reason the second she explained them out loud my brain stopped being able to use them in sentences. I tried to get the Korean next to me to explain it to me and Hannes but I couldn't understand it at all. Finally I had to get another American to explain it to me. He told me not to think about it so much and I said that was what I had done before but explaining it to me confused me too much.

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Comments

[Dad]

Your blogs are the bomb, so to speak
Jenni, I can't tell you how many people feel your blogs are so cool. You're right, they are exactly "travel" blogs, but they talk about things most people would never get from a travel blog. It is so interesting to hear you talk about the interaction between, the differences and similarities with the respective languages and cultures. I know you're REAL busy, but don't totally give up on your blogs... Love, Dad